The Campaign to Protect Rural England's Shaun Spiers says he is satisfied with
the Government planning policy framework rewrite, but will need to consider
the small print.

The revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework were unveiled todayafter intense campaigning from environmental groups, who warned that the draft version of the reforms gave developers a "licence to build".

Planning Minister Greg Clarke's new National Planning Policy Framework gives councils 12 months to draw up local plans to protect them from developers. It will apply a presumption of sustainable development to planning decisions. Local authorities with no local plans would be at risk of building, but Mr Clark says they will have 12 months to develop plans.

The new framework has reduced planning guidelines to a 50 page document.

Shaun Spiers from Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) said that Greg Clarke "genuinely seems to have listened" to the consultation on the framework that had thousands of responses.

"The devil is in the detail but the minister's statement was very reassuring," Mr Spiers said.

He credited Mr Clarke for stating the meaning of sustainable development and including the five principles of the UK Sustainable Development Strategy in the framework, which the CPRE had campaigned for.